Oh my god, I’m a parenting hack hoarder! Seriously. I just spent months cleaning out my house in preparation for our family’s recent move and my rubbish pile looked like a time machine for bad parenting hacks gone by. I came across an endless bag of tricks. And as I looked at my son’s sticker chart and my daughter’s chore chart, I realised just how many parenting hacks I tried based on the advice of friends or experts, only to find that they didn’t work. Or worse yet, those supposed gems and tricks that someone swore would change my kid’s behaviour and my life were actually just a total pain in my a*s. Here are the worst of the worst…

1. Chore charts

For me, a chore chart meant I had to reward my kids for doing simple helpful household tasks, like taking in the rubbish bins or clearing their own plates from the table. I don’t want to teach my kids they get a reward for being helpful. So I chucked the chore chart, but not the chores.

2. The smart night lightI got one of those night lights where the sun lights up when it’s the time you’ve set for your child to wake up. Sounds great except my kids would play with the clock and mess up the time I’d set. That meant I either had to be vigilant about constantly checking the clock or risk my kid waking up at 5 am saying, “But the clock told me it was time.” Turns out, it was easier just to teach my kid how to read the time on an actual clock.

3. The bracelet-pool alarmWhen my daughter was 2 we rented a holiday house that had a pool. I was panicked about pool safety and so I got a pool alarm that had two parts, one of which was a watch-like device that she wore. It sounded an alarm if she walked past the other part of the device, which we placed near the door to the pool. Sounds clever had I not given birth to baby MacGyver who figured out how to take the watch piece off within seconds. No matter where I put it, on her arm or her swimmers strap, she got out of it. Fail!

4. Poker chips as an incentiveA friend suggested using poker chips as incentive for good behaviour so I tried it with my son, who was 4 or 5 at the time. The idea was great, the chips seemed like money to him, and he could earn a toy or treat with a certain amount of poker chips in hand. But he’d lose them, play with them, or forget how many he had, to the point where I felt like I needed poker chips as incentive to keep track of his poker chips. It was exhausting!

5. Pocket money for choresMy kids are still just 5 and 8, so maybe when they get older they can have pocket money for chores. But for now pocket money, like chore charts, has me basically paying my kids to do what I already expect them to do. Plus, there is always the inevitable, “I don’t have enough money to buy what I want to buy,” thing that happens at the toy shop. I want my kids to learn the value of money, but not by getting paid to be a helpful member of the family.

6. Toilet training bribes and tricksI easily trained one child and painfully toilet trained the other. That’s because I toilet trained my second child when she seemed ready. Therefore, it was a pretty easy process. With my first child, I assumed there was a right date to toilet train him. So I tried all the tricks from rewarding him every time he peed or pooed inside the actual toilet to trying to anticipate when he’s going to have to pee or poo.

7. Sleep TrainingLet me explain. I was adamant about sleep training my first born on the very day my paediatrician said I should sleep train him. It worked, but it was a bit gut wrenching for me. My second child never needed sleep training. She just put herself on a schedule and her sleep followed suit. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if I had just waited a month or two with my firstborn, maybe he would have put himself on a schedule, too. Now I’ll never know, but at least they both sleep well!

8. Hiding veggies in favourite foodsI love the idea of sneaking healthy veggies into a smoothie or biscuit so my kids get those harder to get used to veggies in their diet without the food fight with me. Except my kids have the noses and taste buds of a detective and can easily spot any foreign object in their food. So after I’ve spent an hour making broccoli/blueberry muffins, they won’t eat them. It’s a pain. So now I just make veggies they like and call it a day.

9. Seat and stroller coversWhen my kids were babies I saw the world through germ-coloured lenses so I bought every high chair or supermarket trolly cover known to mumkind. In theory, those covers are a great idea except when you try to put one on while holding a squirming baby. My trolley covers spent more time in the boot of my car than under my kids’ butts. And yet, my kids still lived through whatever germs they touched on that trolley.

10. The sleepy manicureI applaud the parent whose baby sleeps soundly enough not to notice mum or dad is cutting his or her nails while he sleeps. But, when I tried cutting my son’s nails while he slept one of two things happened. One, I’d wake him up after I’d worked so hard to get him to sleep. Or two, I couldn’t see because my kids actually sleep in the dark. I quickly learned that it was much easier to trim my kids’ nails after they’d soaked in the tub than risk waking them or cutting them while they were sleeping.

So if you’ve been feeling like every other parent but you runs a tight ship with chore charts and poker chips, they don’t. Turns out, sometimes patience is the only parenting hack you need.

Meredith Gordon is a recovered actress and stand-up comic who has always been a "glass is half annoying" kind of girl. She write movies, blogs, and ad copy and you can find her inner-most snarky thoughts at Bad Sandy. She is married to the world's most stylish straight man and they raise their children in Los Angeles.